The once beautiful district known as Hainault Forest, said to have been named after the wife of Edward III., extending on the north to Theydon Bois, on the west to Leytonstone, on the east to Havering-atte-Bower, and on the south to Aldborough Hatch, belonged in early Norman times to Barking Abbey, and passed, at the dissolution of the monasteries, to the Crown. It was almost as favourite a resort of the Tudors and Stuarts as Epping Forest itself, and is nearly as full of interesting historic associations, but for all that it was condemned in the middle of the nineteenth century as unprofitable waste ground, and in 1851 an Act of Parliament was passed empowering the Government to destroy or remove the deer that had for so many centuries haunted its recesses, to cut down the trees, and to sell the land for farming or building. All too rapidly the work of destruction proceeded, but fortunately, before it was completed, it was finally arrested on the initiative of Mr. North Buxton, whose efforts to save the little remnant left were {73} seconded by the London County Council and various local corporations, with the result that, in 1906, eight hundred acres were bought and secured to the public as a recreation ground. It was of course too late to restore to the forest anything of its ancient charm, for its dense groves of oak and beech were gone for ever, but some few delightful woodlands still remained. Many trees have been planted, and even now certain outlying villages retain something of their original rural character, especially Aldborough Hatch, the name of which signifies an ancient mansion near a hatch or gate of the forest--that has now, however, receded far from it--and Barking Side. The latter, once a secluded spot in a densely wooded neighbourhood, is celebrated as having been near the scene of the famous Fairlop Fair, that was founded in the eighteenth century by Daniel Day, a wealthy blockmaker of Wapping, and for more than two centuries was frequented every year by thousands of pleasure-seekers from the east end of London. The fair took its name from a wide-spreading oak about a mile from the still standing Maypole Inn, beneath which Daniel Day used to entertain his tenants at midsummer; but it was celebrated long before his time. Many allusions are made to it in the contemporary press, notably in the once popular Fairlop Fair song, in which its nickname is explained in the following quaint rhyme-- 'To Hainault Forest Queen Anne she did ride, And beheld the beautiful oak by her side; And after viewing it from the bottom to the top, She said to her court: "It is a Fair lop."' {74}